Add another thing to the list of causes of sewage spills in Orange County, right alongside cracks in pipes, pump station break downs and the deluge of shit we receive from inland sources.
They are … drum roll, please … baby wipes!
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Yes, those products that were originally designed for diaper cleanups and somehow morphed into must haves for adults on the john are more and more clogging underground pipes and causing major sewage breakdowns around the country.
Despite its fabled paywall, the Orange County Register has, bless its heart, posted for all to see an Associated Press feature story on this stinky phenomenon.
Included are the insights of our taxed sewer operators right in the Orange to the C. And thus we learn:
The Orange County Sanitation District in a single year recorded 971 “de-ragging” maintenance calls on 10 pump stations at a cost of $320,000.
Yikes, for half that much I could afford one of those fancy European (or is it Asian?) bowls that squirts water up to clean off undercarriages without need of pre-moistened wipes.
The AP does include a tip from a local official on preventing future backups.
Nicholas Arhontes, director of facilities support services in Orange County, has an even simpler rule for what should go down the toilet.
“Only flush pee, poop and toilet paper,” he said, “because those are the only things that sanitary sewers were really designed for in the old days.”
He forgot the flushed down baby alligators who come back up full grown to bite my ass in my nightmares.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.